The Scarlet Pepper (17 page)

“No.” She dropped the last box of paperwork onto the handcart. It landed with a loud clang.

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Drop it, Casey. I can’t talk about it, okay?” She paused as if reconsidering. “I won’t talk any more about it. Let’s just get this done. I have wasted enough time down here already. I should never have agreed to help you.”

I tossed several of the ammonium nitrate fertilizer bags on top of Fisher’s boxes of paperwork. “I’ll come back for the rest later,” I said. “I don’t want to waste any more of your time or risk tipping the cart over.” I’d already learned that lesson. A few months earlier, when Lorenzo and I were delivering potted plants to the offices in the West
Wing, I’d turned the cart too sharply around a corner. Pots, plants, and soil had gone flying.

Francesca and I took the freight elevator to the ground level. I tugged the heavy handcart through the hallway in search of Wilson Fisher.

Before we got very far, a piercing alarm sounded.

“What’s going on?” Francesca shouted and pressed her hands over her ears.

“I don’t know.”

Two Secret Service agents dressed in identical black suits darted out of their nearby satellite office. Come to think of it, that was where that godawful sound was coming from. Jack Turner, along with several other CAT agents, jogged down the hallway toward us.

“Jack?” I was so glad to see him. “What’s going on?”

“There’s a bomb on this floor,” he answered as he continued down the hall.

A bomb?
I staggered backward, falling over the handcart of paperwork and fertilizer.

G
LORY
be, this was the disastrous training session all over again! But this time it was for real!

Francesca and I had walked into the eye of the storm.

“The bomb must be somewhere over here,” a burly, neckless Secret Service agent barked. He frowned as he scanned the area directly around Francesca and me.

“We should take cover,” Francesca said, pulling on my arm.

According to my training, we should move as quickly as possible to the nearest exit, but I didn’t move. I watched wide-eyed as the agents systematically searched every crevice. Someone had mercifully turned off the piercing alarm, but that didn’t stop the ruckus. Ushers, maids, chefs, curators all came pouring into the hallway to see what was happening.

“Get back! Get back!” an agent shouted at them. “I need you to stay away from this area.”

“This is the sensor that was triggered,” Jack said, pointing to a doorway leading out to the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.

“Sensor?” I asked.

Jack and the rest of his team were too busy searching for the bomb to answer.

“Help me get Jack’s attention,” I said to Francesca. “I need to ask him about the sensors.”

She didn’t answer. I glanced behind me. She wasn’t there.

She’d pulled that slippery gardener act on me again. “Francesca?” I called.

Wilson Fisher, however, came running up, his hard-soled shoes slapping loudly against the stone floor, his long nose twitching with excitement. His voice was labored and breathy. “The sensors are sensitive…electronic…sniffers have been set up at all entrances designed to detect…explosives.”

Jack turned on his heel. Our eyes met for a moment. His gaze then shifted to the large bags of fertilizer on my handcart. A sick feeling gurgled in my stomach.

“No one came in this door,” Agent Steve Sallis reported as he jogged up to join the search. “The dogs are being dispatched. Thatch is bringing the handheld bomb detection unit.”

Another agent held his hands wide and guided the crowd away from the area like a border collie herding sheep. He kind of looked like a border collie, with his alert gaze and long, sleek facial features.

“Um, Jack,” I said. He kept frowning at the fertilizer bags I’d hauled up from the storage room while a half dozen Emergency Response Team members charged in from outside and fanned out around the doorway, their P90 semiautomatics held at the ready. Panic gurgled in my chest at the sight of all those guns. I started my deep breathing exercises. I was inhaling another deep breath when a uniformed agent arrived with a bomb-sniffing dog.

I swallowed hard and held my ground at the cart of fertilizer. Wilson Fisher, his nose still twitching, remained at my side. “Casey, we need to get this paperwork to safety. If the bomb blows up, there will be no replicating my forms.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “There’s no bomb.”

“Not unless you’ve got some gasoline and an electrical source on that handcart,” Jack agreed, looking up at me again. “No bomb.”

“The paperwork.” Fisher tried to pry the handcart’s handle out of my grasp. “It has to come with me.”

“Aren’t you listening? There’s no bomb,” I said, my voice louder than necessary. “It’s the fertilizer. It set off the sensors.”

“The paperwork needs to be saved!” Fisher latched on to the handcart just below its handle and gave a vicious tug.

“Fisher, stop that.” I tugged the handcart back toward me, struggling to keep the assistant usher from running off with the evidence.

“I found the problem,” Jack called to the rest of the team. “Just some bags of fertilizer.”

The hallway fell silent.

“It’s the ammonium nitrate. They set off the sensors, didn’t they?” I asked even though I already knew the answer.

“It’s happened before.” Jack then spoke into his radio. “Looks like a false alarm. Just the gardeners and their fertilizers.”

A large black and tan Belgian Malinois came over to the cart, sniffed, and barked his agreement.

“You put explosives on the handcart with my files?” Fisher demanded. He jumped as if a nettle had stung him. “
My files
? There are explosives on top of my files?”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“You need to be more careful, Ms. Calhoun. Those files cannot be replaced.”

“Really, the fertilizer’s not volatile. It’s just one component in making a fertilizer bomb.”

“Well, then.” He straightened his suit coat and regained his nose-in-the-air composure. “I’ll take those boxes.” He called over several of the ushers.

“Casey Calhoun. I should have known you’d be at the center of this.” Mike Hatch, the special agent in charge of
the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team, arrived, followed by a handful of scowling CAT agents. “Do you know how much trouble your fertilizer has caused the President?”

“I didn’t—”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to take my files now,” Fisher said.

Thatch held up his hand. “Nothing on this cart is leaving. The Secret Service will need to confiscate it.”

“But—but—” I started to protest. My notes and to-do list for Wednesday’s harvest were on the handcart. I needed them.

“We had to pull the President out of an important budget meeting to evacuate him to a safe location.” Thatch stood too close. I could feel his hot breath on my face. I tried to back up, but he followed.

“Do you know how much of a disruption you’ve caused? Those are delicate negotiations. I’d hate to think the government shuts down because you carried fertilizer into the White House.”

“Out. I was carrying it out.”

“Did you or did you not cause the alarms to go off? You did. So don’t try to wiggle out of the blame.”

I thought he was done. He’d backed away, but he swooped back in like a bird of prey after a mouse and stuck his finger under my nose.

“Need I remind you—and everyone here—how miserably you failed your safety training? Next time an alarm sounds, I expect you to get the hell out of the way. That’s all you need to do. Get the hell out of everyone’s way.”

Jack gave me a pained look before he started to push the handcart down the hall.

Wait a blasted minute! “My notes,” I called. “My notes for the harvest are on the cart. I need them.”

I also needed to warn them about the rest of the fertilizer bags in the storage room. “And the fertilizer, there’s more in—” I started to explain. “Jack, wait!”

“Don’t you think you’ve already said enough?” Thatch
said. “Turner, what are you waiting for? Get that stuff out of here!”

“I just—” I needed to explain about the other fertilizer bags, and I needed my notes.

“You just cause trouble,” Thatch shot back. “You’ve been a thorn—”

“Thank you, Agent Thatch.” Margaret Bradley’s appearance stunned everyone. The First Lady, dressed in a dark blue maternity dress, moved with remarkable grace through the throng of Secret Service agents. Milo bounded, all puppy legs and golden fur, alongside her, followed by three harried-looking staff members. “I appreciate the care you take in protecting both me and my husband.” She touched a hand to her swelling stomach. “I sleep soundly at night thanks to your efforts.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Bradley.” Thatch stood a little taller as he faced her.

“Now if you’ll excuse us, I need to have a word with Miss Calhoun about Wednesday’s harvest.”

“Of course.” He bowed his head and stepped back, finally giving me room to breathe and to escape.

“I’m not done with you,” he threatened as I passed.

“What an inventive way to liven up a Monday afternoon,” Margaret Bradley said after she’d led me out the door and into the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden. With a raised palm, she stopped her staffers from following.

“I didn’t know the fertilizer would set off the sensors. I didn’t even know the sensors were there. I’m so embarrassed.”

Milo darted between us and out into the garden. He took a wide circuit around the path, barking at the squirrels, before flopping down on a thick patch of grass. He rolled around on his back, expressing his pleasure with a series of contented grunts and growls.

Margaret smiled at his puppy antics. She then took my hand as we strolled toward a pergola lush with budding Concord grape vines. “Mistakes happen. I should know. I’ve been making the lion’s share of them around here
lately,” she said as she sat on a white cast-iron bench and invited me to join her. “By the way, the vegetable garden is looking so healthy. I can’t believe how tall the pepper plants have already grown.”

“Lordy, please, don’t let the press hear you say that. As you know, some joker is telling anyone who’ll listen that we’re sneaking in healthy plants in the middle of the night.”

“Whether you’re trucking the plants in at night or growing them in the ground, I don’t care as long as I get a chance to eat some of those bell peppers. My mouth was watering this morning. It’s amazing.”

“It’s not just me. The volunteers have done tremendous work. And all this heat—the peppers love the hot, humid weather. The lettuce, not so much, but they’ll get pulled and eaten on Wednesday.”

“The volunteers.” She sighed. “Do they seem happy?”

“I believe so.” Milo, I noticed, had started to nibble on a planting of rosemary. I clapped my hands and clicked my tongue. He looked up at me and stopped.

“I should have invited the lionesses of D.C. to tea the day after the inauguration. I’m afraid my efforts now are too little, too late.” Margaret shook her head. “It’s just part of the game, though. John’s been playing it his entire adult life. I’m new to it. And right now I’m having a difficult time even caring about D.C.’s endless political and social wrangling.” She rested her hand on her swelling belly. “I simply want to be a good mother.”

While I could grow a garden, I knew nothing about “birthin’ babies.” So I smiled and nodded and wondered if this was her way of scolding me about causing so much trouble at the White House today, starting with Manny questioning me in connection with Parker’s murder. If I were an expectant mother, my first order of business would be to kick all suspected murderers out of the White House.

“Griffon Parker,” she said, confirming my worst fears.

My stomach twisted into a knot.

I nudged the gravel between the seating area’s pavers with my toe while waiting for the ax to fall. Grandmother
Faye and my aunts, Willow and Alba, would welcome me back to Rosebrook with open arms. So I wouldn’t be homeless. It’d take time and hard work to reestablish my landscaping business, but I wasn’t afraid of either of those things.

“I understand,” I said to save her from having to actually fire me.

“You do?” She shifted in her seat and looked at me askew. “Then you must be a better investigator than the Secret Service gives you credit for.”

I struggled not to let my confusion show as I met her gaze and nodded.

“His investigation was bad enough, but now he’s dead. Poisoned.” Margaret glanced around to make sure none of the Secret Service agents were close enough to hear. “I heard that you found the fake suicide note in the garden. The implication of how it might have ended up among my pepper plants terrifies me. If you happen to find anything else or hear anything about anyone—”

“You want me to play sleuth?”

“No. God, no, Casey. Nothing so drastic. You need to guard your reputation and your personal safety. Don’t cause any trouble for John.” Milo’s ears perked up in response to her vehement answer.